The Assassin
Imaginative Tales – July 1957
(1957)*
Robert Silverberg

Bigelow had a grand idea; he would travel more than a hundred years through time to Ford's Theatre, see the President, and warn him about—

-

	THE TIME WAS drawing near, Walter Bigelow thought. Just a few more adjustments, and his great ambition would be fulfilled.

	He stepped back from the Time Distorter and studied the complex network of wires and tubes with an expert's practiced eye. TWENTY YEARS, he thought. Twenty years of working and scrimping, of pouring money into the machine that stood before him on the workbench. Twenty years, to save Abraham Lincoln's life.

	And now he was almost ready. 

	Bigelow had conceived his grand idea when still young, newly out of college. He had stumbled across a volume of history and had read of Abraham Lincoln and his struggle to save the Union.

	Bigelow was a tall, spare, raw-boned man standing better than six feet four—and with a shock he discovered that he bore an amazing resemblance to a young portrait of the Great Emancipator. That was when his identification with Lincoln began.

	He read every Lincoln biography he could find, steeped himself in log-cabin legends and the texts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And, gradually, he became consumed with bitterness because an assassin's hand had struck Lincoln down at the height of his triumph.

	"Damned shame, great man like that," he mumbled into his beer one night in a bar. 

	"What's that?" a sallow man at his left asked. "Someone die?"

	"Yes," Bigelow said. "I'm talking about Lincoln. Damned shame."

	The other chuckled. "Better get yourself a new newspaper, pal. Lincoln's been dead for a century. Still mourning?"

	Bigelow turned, his gaunt face alive with anger. "Yes! Yes-—why shouldn't I mourn? A great man like Lincoln—-"

	"Sure, sure," the other said placatingly. "I'll buy that. He was a great president, chum—but he's been dead for a hundred years. One hundred. You can't bring him back to life, you know."

	"Maybe I can," Bigelow said suddenly—and the great idea was born.

	It took eight years of physics and math before Bigelow had developed, a workable time-travel theory. Seven more years passed before the first working model stood complete.

	He tested it by stepping within its field, allowing himself to be cast back ten years. A few well-placed bets, and he had enough cash to continue. Ten years was not enough. Lincoln had been assassinated in 1865—Friday, April 14, 1865. Bigelow needed a machine that could move at least one hundred twenty years into the past.

	It took time. Five more years.

	He reached out, adjusted a capacitor, pinched off an unnecessary length of copper wire. It was ready. After twenty years, he was ready at last.

-

	BIGELOW TOOK THE morning bus to Washington, D. C. The Time Distorter would not affect space, and it was much more efficient to make the journey from Chicago to Washington in 1979 by monobus in a little over an hour, than in 1865 by mulecart or some other such conveyance, possibly taking a day. Now that he was so close to success, he was too impatient to allow any such delay as that.

	The Time Distorter was cradled in a small black box on his lap; he spent the hour of the bus ride listening to its gentle humming and ticking, letting the sound soothe him and ease his nervousness.

	There was really no need to be nervous, he thought. Even if he failed in his first attempt at blocking Lincoln's assassination, he had an infinity of time to keep trying again.

	He could return to his own time and make the jump again, over and over. There were a hundred different ways he could use to prevent Lincoln from entering the fatal theater on the night of April 14. A sudden phone-call—no, there were no telephones yet. A message of some kind. He could burn down the theater the morning of the play. He could find John Wilkes Booth and kill him before he could make his fateful speech of defiance and fire the fatal bullet. He could—

	Well, it didn't matter. He was going to succeed the first time. Lincoln was a man of sense; he wouldn't willingly go to his death having been warned.

	A warm glow of pleasure spread over Bigelow as he dreamed of the consequences of his act. Lincoln alive, going on to complete his second term, President until 1869. The weak, ineffectual Andrew Johnson would remain Vice-President, where he belonged. The South would be rebuilt sanely and welcomed back into the Union; there would be no era of carpetbaggers, no series of governmental scandals and no dreary Reconstruction era.

	"Washington!"

	Moving almost in a dream, Bigelow left the bus and stepped out into the crowded capitol streets. It was a warm summer day; soon, he thought, it would be a coolish April evening, back in 1865 ... 

	He headed for the poor part of town, away from the fine white buildings and gleaming domes. Huddling in a dark alley on the south side, he undid the fastenings of the box that covered the Time Distorter.

	He glanced around, saw that no one was near. Then, swiftly, he depressed the lever.

-

	THE WORLD SWIRLED around him, vanished. 

	Then, suddenly, it took shape again.

	He was in an open field now; the morning air was cool but pleasant, and in the distance he could see a few of the buildings that made the nation's capital famous. There was no Lincoln Memorial, of course, and the bright needle of Washington's Monument did not thrust upward into the sky. But the familiar Capitol dome looked much as it always had, and he could make out the White House further away.

	Bigelow refastened the cover of the Distorter and tucked the box under his arm. It clicked quietly, reminding him over and over again of the fact that he was in the year 1865—the morning of the day John Wilkes Booth put a bullet through the brain of Abraham Lincoln.

	Time passed slowly for Bigelow. He made his way toward the center of town and spent the day in downtown Washington, hungrily drinking in the gossip. Abe Lincoln's name was on everyone's tongue.

	The dread War had ended just five days before with Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Lincoln was in his hour of triumph. It was Friday. The people were still discussing the speech he had made the Tuesday before.

	"He said he's going to make an announcement," someone said. "Abe's going to tell the Southerners what kind of program he's going to put into effect for them."

	"Wonder what's on his mind?" someone else asked.

	"No matter what it is, I'll bet he makes the South like what he says."

	He had never delivered that speech, Bigelow thought. And the South had been doomed to a generation of hardship and exploitation by the victorious North that had left unhealing scars.-

	The day passed. President Lincoln was to attend the Ford Theatre that night, to see. a production of a play called "Our American Cousin."

	Bigelow knew what the history books said. Lincoln had had an apprehensive dream the night before: he was sailing on a ship of a peculiar build, being borne on it with great speed toward a dark and undefined shore. Like Caesar on the Ides of March, he had been warned—and, like Caesar, he would go unheeding to his death.

	But Bigelow would see that that never happened.

	History recorded that Lincoln attended the performance, that he seemed to be enjoying the play. And that shortly after ten that evening, a wild-eyed man would enter Lincoln's box, fire once, and leap to the stage, shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis!"

	The man would be the crazed actor John Wilkes Booth. He would snag a spur in the drapery as he dropped to the stage, and would break his leg—but nevertheless he would vanish into the wings, make his way through the theater he knew so well, mount a horse waiting at the stage door. Some days later he would be dead.

	As for President Lincoln, he would slump forward in his box. The audience would, be too stunned to move for a moment—but there was nothing that could be done. Lincoln would die the next morning without recovering consciousness.-

	"Now he belongs to the ages," Secretary of State Stanton would say.

	No! Bigelow thought. It would not happen. It would not happen ...

-

	EVENING APPROACHED. Bigelow, crouching in an alley across the street from the theater, watched the carriages arriving for the performance that night. Feeling oddly out of place in his twentieth-century clothing, he watched the finely-dressed ladies and gentlemen descending from their coaches. Everyone in Washington knew the President would be at the theater that night, and they were determined to look their best.

	Bigelow waited. Finally, a handsome carriage appeared, and several others made way for it. He tensed, knowing who was within.

	A woman of regal bearing descended first—Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife. And then Lincoln appeared.

	For some reason, the President paused at the street-corner and looked around. His eyes came to rest on the dark alley where Bigelow crouched invisibly, and Bigelow stared at the face he knew almost as well as his own: the graying beard, the tired, old, wrinkled face, the weary eyes of Abe Lincoln.

	Then he rose and began to run.

	"Mr. President! Mr. President!"

	He realized he must have been an outlandish figure, dashing across the street in his strange costume with the Time Distorter clutched under one arm. He drew close to Lincoln.

	"Sir, don't go to the theater tonight! If you do—"

	A hand, suddenly wrapped itself around his mouth. President Lincoln smiled pityingly and turned away, walking on down the street toward the theater. Other hands seized Bigelow, dragged him away. Blue-clad arms. Union soldiers. The President's bodyguard.

	"You don't understand!" Bigelow yelled. He bit at the hand that held him, and got a fierce kick in return. "Let go of me! Let go!"

	There were four of them, earnest-looking as they went about their duties. They held Bigelow, pummelled him angrily. One of them reached down for the Distorter.

	In terror Bigelow saw that his attempt to save Lincoln had been a complete failure, that he would have to return to his own time and try all over again. He attempted to switch on the Distorter, but before he could open the cover rough hands had pulled it from him.

	"Give me that!" He fought frantically, but they held him. One of the men in blue uniforms took the Distorter, looked at it curiously, finally held it up to his ear.

	His eyes widened. "It's ticking! It's a bomb!"

	"No!" Bigelow shouted, and then watched in utter horror as the soldier, holding the Distorter at arm's length, ran across the street and hurled the supposed bomb as far up the alley as he could possibly throw it.

	There was no explosion—only the sound of delicate machinery shattering.

	Bigelow watched numbly as the four men seized his arms again.

	"Throw a bomb, will you? Come on, fellow—we'll show you what happens to guys who want to assassinate President Lincoln!"

	Further down the street, the gaunt figure of Abe Lincoln was just entering the theater. No one gave Bigelow a chance to explain.

The End